The Washington Times has an article on Abby Johnson’s $5.7 million whistleblower lawsuit against Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast:

According to the lawsuit, PPGC contracted with the state to help prevent unwanted pregnancies among a population of eligible women. The clinics’ main service was to offer women an annual family-planning exam and consultation; only office visits “related to contraceptive management” were reimbursable by the Medicaid program, the lawsuit said.

However, owing to financial pressures of its own, PPGC leaders and staff collaborated to register all kinds of ineligible services — pregnancy tests, sexual-disease tests, Pap tests — for Medicaid reimbursement, the lawsuit claims, adding that the bosses admitted to Ms. Johnson and other clinic directors that these claims were not eligible for reimbursement, but told them, “We have to keep these people as patients” and “We must turn every call and visit into a revenue-generating client.”

Dr. Peter Goodwin (pictured left), a leading advocate of Oregon’s assisted suicide law killed himself using pills obtain under the state’s “Death With Dignity Act.”

Two New York researchers were awarded the King Faisal International Prize for Medicine for their work to treat alloimmune thrombocytopenia, “an auto-immune disease which can cause fatal brain hemorrhages in unborn fetuses and newborn children. The cause is unclear, but the illness causes the mother’s immune system to attack the fetus as if it were a foreign body or disease.”

The article doesn’t go on for more than 1,500 words, but for non-ethicists it has a high surprise-per-word ratio. The information that newborn babies aren’t people is just the beginning. A reader learns that “many non-human animals… are persons” and therefore enjoy a “right to life.” (Such ruminative ruminants, unlike babies, are self-aware enough to know that getting killed will entail a “loss of value.”) The authors don’t tell us which species these “non-human persons” belong to, but it’s safe to say that you don’t want to take a medical ethicist to dinner at Outback.

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10 Responses to “Life Links 3-14-12”

“The cause is unclear, but the illness causes the mother’s immune system to attack the fetus as if it were a foreign body or disease.”

Well..that kind of blows the “MY BODY” argument out of the water, doesn’t it! A mother’s immune system wouldn’t attack her pre-born baby if it WERE part of her body.
Your immune system doesn’t attack your OWN organs as if they were “foreign objects” in your body. That’s why transplant recipients have to take “anti-rejection” medication for the rest of their lives. A pre-born baby is a SEPARATE INDIVIDUAL.. NOT a bodily organ!

Pamela, while I agree with your point, I think you may want to rethink how you are making it. The ‘attack’ is a failure of the normal workings of the body, the woman’s body isn’t *supposed* to attack the baby’s body, even though it is separate. This is an example of a disorder, a disfunction in the pregnancy dyad. A disfunctional immune system *will* attack it’s own body, as happens in several very dibilitating and even deadly diseases such as lupus and juvenile arthritis.

“The article doesn’t go on for more than 1,500 words, but for non-ethicists it has a high surprise-per-word ratio. The information that newborn babies aren’t people is just the beginning. A reader learns that “many non-human animals… are persons” and therefore enjoy a “right to life.” (Such ruminative ruminants, unlike babies, are self-aware enough to know that getting killed will entail a “loss of value.”)”

Ugh, I hate stuff like this. It makes vegetarians look like nutbars. I swear I think babies are more important than non-humans.

…”the bosses admitted to Ms. Johnson and other clinic directors that these claims were not eligible for reimbursement, but told them, “We have to keep these people as patients” and “We [pp, the dead babies r us’ mob] must turn every call and visit into a revenue-generating cli’ent.”

“They can appear friendly at first, but when you don’t give them what they want, they become hostile and dangerous. The greater the dependency, the more aggressive they become. Among humans, we call it Leftist Dependency Syndrome.”

I predict there will be many current and former pp employees who will be pleading the fifth, plea bargaining or leaving the jurisdiction.

At Carafem, staff members plan to greet clients with warm teas, comfortable robes and a matter-of-fact attitude.

“We don’t want to talk in hushed tones,” said Carafem president Christopher Purdy. “We use the A-word.”…

Because Carafem will offer only the abortion pill, not vacuum aspiration or other surgical procedures, prospective clients must be no more than 10 weeks pregnant….

After receiving counseling and some basic tests, Carafem clients will take an initial pill at the clinic. Purdy’s team expects to get them in and out quickly, within about 60 minutes. They will be sent home with a second set of pills to take the next day. The second dose induces the abortion, which resembles a miscarriage, typically within six hours.

By offering only pharmaceutical abortions, Purdy says, he can avoid purchasing expensive surgical equipment and keep prices low for clients. The average pharmaceutical abortion cost about $500 in the United States in 2011, Guttmacher figures show; Purdy plans to charge around $400.

Another striking aspect of the project is the design: The clinic will have wood floors and a natural wood tone on the walls that recalls high-end salons such as Aveda. Appointments, offered evenings and weekends, can be booked online or via a 24-hour hotline.

“It was important for us to try to present an upgraded, almost spa-like feel,” said Melissa S. Grant, vice president of health services for the clinic.

If the project is successful, Purdy says, he hopes to expand his model to other states.